Judge Declares Natalee Holloway Legally Dead

An Alabama judge signed an order that declares Natalee Holloway, the teenager who went missing in Aruba while on a high school graduation trip, legally dead. Holloway was last seen in 2005.

The AP reports:

David Holloway told the judge in September he believed his daughter had died and he wanted to stop payments on her medical insurance and use her $2,000 college fund to help her younger brother. Thursday's hearing was set before a suspect questioned in Holloway's disappearance, Dutchman Joran van der Sloot, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Peru to the 2010 murder of a woman in Lima.

Natalee Holloway disappeared on a high school graduation trip May 30, 2005. She was last seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot early that day. Her body was never found and the case garnered intense media scrutiny and international attention.

Van der Sloot was detained twice in connection with the case, but he was never charged.